To illustrate just how wide the gap has grown between the new upper class and the new lower class, let me start with the broader upper-middle and working classes from which they are drawn, using two fictional neighborhoods that I hereby label Belmont (after an archetypal upper-middle-class suburb near Boston) and Fishtown (after a neighborhood in Philadelphia that has been home to the white working class since the Revolution).

The report prompted Peter Dorfman, a software engineer in Belmont, Mass., to set aside several thousand dollars to insulate his home, in hopes of not only saving money in the long run but also joining the ranks of his most efficient neighbors.

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